The controversial embedding experiment employed for coverage of the war in Iraq is widely considered to have been a success, with few if any reports of undue censorship. Some journalists were expelled from their “embed” units for allegedly failing to follow rules of operational security.
However, the issue is a complicated one and the results are still being examined. Some media analysts say the embedding system resulted in unbalanced coverage of the war due to the high volume of reports coming from behind U.S. lines.
A total of 12 journalists have so far been killed in Iraq in combat-related incidents involving U.S. troops, along with a translator for BBC. Several journalists were also killed in noncombat related incidents.
The most controversial incident came during the final assault on Baghdad, which resulted in the deaths of Ukrainian cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Spanish cameraman Jose Couso. Both men died April 8 when a U.S. tank shell hit the Palestine Hotel, used as headquarters for many of the foreign media. Three other journalists were wounded in the attack.
Meanwhile, on the same day, U.S. warplanes dropped a missile on the office of the Al-Jazeera TV station, killing cameraman Tareq Ayoub. Another station, Abu Dhabi TV, was also hit by US-fired munitions during a fierce street battle.
The Palestine Hotel attack was condemned by various media organizations, including the IAPA. Shortly after the attack the IAPA expressed its concern and sadness over the deaths of the two journalists. The IAPA asked for an immediate investigation into the incident.
On May 27 the Committee to Protect Journalists released an investigative report on Palestine Hotel attack, titled "Permission to Fire." The report provided new details suggesting that the attack on the journalists, while not deliberate, was avoidable. According to the CPJ, Pentagon officials, as well as commanders on the ground in Baghdad, knew that the Palestine Hotel was full of international journalists and were intent on not hitting it. However, these senior officers apparently failed to convey their concern to the tank commander who fired on the hotel. (A copy of the report is available at http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2003/palestine_hotel/palestine_hotel.html)
According to the report, a U.S. battalion encountered stiff resistance from Iraqi forces in Baghdad on the morning on April 8. It was determined that an Iraqi forward observer, or spotter, was guiding the attacks against the Americans, and a frantic search for the spotter began. During this search a U.S. tank officer believed he had sighted a person with binoculars in the Palestine Hotel, and received permission to fire on the building a short while later.
The CPJ has called on the Pentagon to conduct a thorough and public investigation into the shelling of the Palestine Hotel.
After the main ground war was over, attacks on the media have continued. Award-winning Palestinian journalist Mazen Dana was shot dead by a U.S. tank crew August 17 as he was filming outside the Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad. U.S. soldiers mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and fatally shot him. Dana, who worked for Reuters, had gone to the prison after it had been the subject of a mortar attack on the previous day that had killed six Iraqis and wounded 59 others. He had previously secured permission from U.S. forces to film in the area. According to eyewitnesses there was no fighting taking place when the journalist was shot. A U.S. military investigation found that U.S. soldiers acted within the rules of engagement when they shot Dana.
There have been several other close calls involving journalists.
On Sept 18 U.S. army troops opened fire on an Associated Press reporter and photographer in the town of Khaldiya, 50 miles west of Baghdad. The photographer and his driver jumped from their car moments before it was riddled by machine gun fire from a U.S. tank, according to an AP report on the incident.
In the same incident, an AP correspondent who had arrived in another car was fired upon by a .50-caliber machine gun on a U.S. tank. The car was hit about 20 times. No one was injured, but both cars were badly damaged.
On September 24, the Washington-based group Human Rights Watch issued a warning that "overaggressive reactions by U.S. military forces are putting journalists and other civilians in unnecessary danger.” As the occupying power in Iraq, the U.S. is obligated to ensure public safety "in a manner that conforms to international humanitarian law and human rights standards," the group stated.
In separate incidents U.S. troops arrested three journalists in Baghdad working for the Arabic television channel Al-Aalam. The Al-Aalam network said reporters and cameramen Sami Hassan, Zoheir Mostafa and Ghuran Tofiq were detained in front of the central police building in Baghdad.
In March the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) revoked the press accreditation of two correspondents working with the Qatar-based news channel Al-Jazeera, claiming it wanted to reduce the number of journalists on the stock exchange floor for security reasons and to give priority to financial networks and their reporters. The revocation came just after the channel had aired controversial footage from Iraqi state television of U.S. prisoners of war.
Correspondents Ammar Shankari and Ramzi Shiber were later notified that their accreditation to cover the NYSE had been reinstated.
In February, the United Nations correspondent for the Iraqi News Agency, Mohammad Hassan Allawi, was expelled by the U.S. government. Mr. Allawi was accused of "engaging in activities outside his normal duties and considered prejudicial to national security." It is worth noting that no journalist accredited to the U.N. had ever before been told to leave the country.
Ownership rules were changed on a split vote by the Federal Communications Commission in June. They give media companies the right to up to 45 per cent of the TV station ownership (instead of 35 percent) and allow greater cross-ownership in major cities. On September 4 a Federal Court in Philadelphia blocked the rules based on the argument that they would concentrate too much power in the hands of media companies.
Critics say concentration of ownership threatens diversity in the U.S. media.
The House of Representatives passed legislation July 23 to block the new federal rules. The House legislation would return the ownership cap to 35 percent.
TV networks want the elimination of the cap entirely, or at least raising it above 45 per cent. Two of the networks, CBS and Fox, are already slightly over the 35 percent limit, according to The New York Times.
On Sept 2 Vivendi Universal Entertainment announced its plan to merge its entertainment business with General Electric's television network NBC. The new company, with revenues of $13 billion for 2003, will be a new force on the global media scene, joining AOL Time Warner, Disney, Viacom and News Corp as the major U.S. players.
The FCC also approved September 22 the $3.4 billion buyout of Hispanic Broadcasting Corp by Los Angeles-based Univision Communications, creating the largest Spanish language media conglomerate in the U.S., with 53 TV stations and 68 radio stations.
The deal had been opposed by rival Spanish language broadcaster, NBC's Hialeah-based Telemundo, which has 24 TV stations and Miami-based Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS), which owns about 25 radio stations. They argued that the deal would stifle competition, claiming that the Spanish-language market is separate from the larger English-language market and that the combination of Univision and HBC would unfairly dominate the smaller Hispanic sector.
The new USA Patriot Act has aroused concern over exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that frustrate the right of the news media to obtain information from the government.
The new rules do not address the requirements for confidentiality of "critical infrastructure" information in the new Homeland Security Act, a requirement that will protect information under Exemption 3 to the FOIA, which allows agencies to withhold information made secret by other statutes.
The law also potentially gives the government new right of access to media sources and records. Section 215 permits the FBI to obtain secret warrants in foreign terrorism or intelligence investigations for "books, records, papers, documents and other items," from all types of businesses. Such warrants must first be approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees investigations of spies and foreign terrorists.
Public interest groups have asked the Supreme Court to review the federal appellate court decision that allows the Justice Department to withhold the names of hundreds of people secretly arrested and detained since the terrorist attacks of Sept 11 2001.
In early October the Justice Department announced a federal investigation of the identity of the two senior (Bush) administration officials who allegedly leaked the name of a CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak and several other journalists. It is a serious crime to publicly reveal the identity of a CIA agent. Ethical questions have also been raised over whether Novak should have printed the name.
A grand jury indicted Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, publisher of Chicago-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Majhar, on four counts after he was arrested July 9 for allegedly gathering information about Iraqi opposition figures as an agent of Saddam Hussein's intelligence service.
On September 30 the editor of El Diario-La Prensa, New York's oldest Spanish-language daily resigned after the paper's owners told him not to publish an opinion column written by Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Gerson Borrero is returning to his job as a full-time columnist for the paper.
An administrative inquiry by the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility in May criticized several federal employees after a Federal Express package sent between two AP bureaus was improperly seized last September.
Larry Hiatt, the publisher of the small Kansas newspaper, the Baxter Springs News, and columnist Ron Thomas, were charged in March with criminal libel for a column and advertisement that described the city clerk as "hateful."
The pair, as well a city council candidate, face fines of $2,500 and up to year in jail. Kansas is one of only 17 states that still have criminal libel statutes. Last year, the publisher and editor of a newspaper in Wyandotte County were convicted of criminal libel for falsely reporting that the mayor of Kansas City lived outside the county.
In September several reporters received letter from an FBI special agent, demanding that the reporters hold onto any notes or communications having to do with Adam Lamo, the so-called Homeless Hacker, charged with computer fraud after he exposed holes in corporate America's cyber networks.
The San Jose Mercury News sued the Santa Clara County district attorney for allegedly threatening to jail witnesses who speak to the press in connection with a grand jury investigation of a local judge. The threat of jail time "violated witnesses' First Amendment right to talk to whom they want," the Mercury News said in an editorial. "It also obstructed the newspaper's ability to report the news," the paper said.
The Federal Communications Commission ruled in September that shock-jock Howard Stern is a newsman, and thereby not subject to a FCC regulation that requires broadcasters to provide equal air time to political candidates.
According to the Washington Post, Howard Stern, notorious for jokes about lesbian sex, toilet humor and other lowbrow comedy, wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger to appear on the show but feared it would be required to provide on-air time to the 134 other candidates in the race.
In October a U.S. District Court Judge ruled that Stars and Stripes reporter, Sandra Jontz, did not have to reveal the names of confidential sources. She determined that Congress expressly stated that Stars and Stripes, a daily newspaper for military personnel, "enjoys the full protection of the First Amendment, and military personnel at the frontiers of freedom must enjoy their First Amendment rights."
Jontz reported that the Department of Defense is being sued by Linda Tripp, who gained notoriety after she revealed secret tapes of conversations she had with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, for violating her privacy by leaking information that she was interviewing for a position at the Department's George Marshall Center in Germany. In July 2002, lawyers for Tripp sought to obtain Jontz's notes and the names of her sources.
Tripp alleges that she was humiliated by the article, claiming that the position, which she did not win, was an embarrassing step down for her.

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